profitable clout and skills
Easy to get the feeling nowadays that no one will do things for free as a hobby anymore and keep it separate from work or income. I swear if someone grew a sizable forum community today you’d suddenly be seeing them speak (paid) at conferences about successful community building, sell merch of the forum, and create a portfolio website for their newly founded LLC or something where they describe themselves as “expert online community builder and forum creator” that charges by the hour.
Actually I’m lowkey seeing this unfold online in the IndieWeb. There is something so off about milking positive hobby experiences to death for a career and list private experiences as a sort of qualification. Why is people’s mobile-non-compatible website in the Neocities style now a portfolio as a web developer? Why is your job as a Discord mod relevant for whatever “personality hire” job at a company?
I guess I should have seen it coming when most of the open jobs on the market right now are Social Media Manager and it’s probably helpful there to show you have accounts everywhere that are witty and have lots of followers. Of course there would be people trying to get that with forums and Mastodon instances.